Saturday, January 19, 2008

Bags from the past

Dear Shayne,

Posting Rachael's bag this week made me think of other knitting bags I have made and, more specifically... the Great Closure Debate.

This bag style was inspired by a bag I got in a swap on Craftster. That bag didn't have a closure and I really liked how well it worked for carrying knitting. So when I started making this bag, it did not have a closure. The first one was even reversible!

Here's a photo of the inside of that first one, showing the lack of closure (I used the same fabric for Rachael's bag on the interior of this one):

And just because I'm proud of it (I had to hand-sew the final seam... I hate hand-sewing, so I'm a show off about it) here it is, inside out:

Because it was reversible, even when I did entertain the notion of a closure, my head exploded. Looking back, I could have done the same loop-and-button move I did this week, only with a button inside and out, but... since my head had already exploded, this didn't occur to me.

I made a couple of others with no closure, including this one for Jan:

The Sacramento Monarchs are a WNBA team. Jan's a big fan, so I made this iron-on transfer for her bag. That was kind of an adventure on its own... I couldn't find a hi-res version of the logo, so I ended up fiddling quite a bit with it in Photoshop. It ended up kind of soft looking, but I like the effect (this is a crappy, blurry photo of it. It's much more crisp in real life.)

After getting some reports that a closure might be nice, I tried one. Here's a shot of the inside of the next bag, showing the snap I tried:

Here's an exterior shot, cause the bag is so damned cute:

I don't think that was the right closure for this bag, though. These bags don't have a lot of structure -- just two layers of cotton -- and this is one of those industrial strength magnet-style closures. Sometimes I worry I'm going to tear the bag in half when I try to pry it open! So I'm curious to see how well the hook-and-button closure works on Rachael's bag.

In fact, I may just have to make one for myself so I can test it out first-hand. Hee hee. You know, for the sake of research.